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This should be a criminal offence. That's the only way the police will stop their self-interested misbehaviour and a financial penalty will not suffice - it will be paid with OUR money, which is already the case with civil damages awarded. A case should have to be signed off by at least a superintendent, who will automatically be liable, unless a judge thinks in a particular case that s/he could not have suspected that the jr officers would deliberately conceal relevant evidence. In any case, should police not have to pass ALL evidence to both sides? After all that has happened over the last 50 years, why do we still allow the police to consider they are masters of all they behold? Some of the messages were released a couple of days ago and it is inconceivable that anyone (like me on the Clapham omnibus) could fail to see their relevance. Never mind the police, how is it that the supposedly disinterested (so I was told in long-ago youth) prosecutors didn't realise it (otherwise, why would they not have told the judge themselves that they could no longer proceed)? This makes it even more difficult to understand how lawyers' can be considered entirely honest.